Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday November 16, 2009 @11:04PM
from the can't-hear-you dept.

eldavojohn writes "In a town-hall-style Q&A with (hand-picked) Chinese students in Shanghai, President Obama made several statements knocking China's firewall and censorship. Quoting: 'I am a big believer in technology and I'm a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information. I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas. It encourages creativity. And so I've always been a strong supporter of open Internet use. I'm a big supporter of non-censorship. This is part of the tradition of the United States that I discussed before, and I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet — or unrestricted Internet access — is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged.' The Washington Post notes that the event was broadcast only on the local level, and in fact Chinese authorities removed from view what little coverage it had gotten, after about an hour. But at least American news media are gobbling it up."

They're streaming this speech, and historically China has not blocked this domain. So, provided there are curious Chinese citizens who are aware of the visit they have a way to hear directly what was said.

Streaming in Chinese? Let us say it was the other way around, and the Chinese president was speaking here, how many "curious American citizens" would even understand what was on the Chinese equivalent of whitehouse.gov?

When you've got the numbers working for you, you should stop playing stupid games. Is there a reason that you use Obama's middle name and not McCain's (it's Sidney) other than Obama's middle name being Hussein? It dilutes your point. I'd be curious to see the votes by race for Kerry, Gore, and Clinton (x2) in the last few presidential elections. That would probably make a better baseline.

If you claim that normal support would be closer to 65%, then it's only 30% who voted

The AC above above is a race-baiting bigot, but one should publish correct facts to avoid leaving their statistics on the wall.

Historically, African-Americans have voted Democrat 88-92% of the time, and sometimes as high as 95%. Going into the 2008 election, any Democratic candidate could expect to get that much. Obama, by pulling 96% of the black vote, at most pulled a couple of percent that he might not have gotten if he'd been white. And even then, it's not obvious that Hilary wouldn't have also gotte

What does their primary voting pattern have to do with a general election? They had to vote for one or the other. And in fact, they were 80% for Hillary up through February of 2008. Obama didn't have the majority of their support until after it was mathematically clear that he was going to win the nomination at the end of March.

So, your claim that they voted for him based on the color of his skin (as if black people are too stupid to pick a candidate for any other reason) is simply false.

So that's why he's opposing and releasing all of the information about the ACTA treaty as well as allowing the pictures of the "POWs" that were enhanced interrogated to be shown. It's great to know that he got rid of all those national security and state secrets defenses in the courts, too.

And putting legislation online at least five days before it's voted on.

And allowing congressmen enough time to read legislation rather than ramming it down their throats at 2am.

And ending backroom politics.

And get rid of the lobbyists - though perhaps I misheard him on that one and he actually said "I promise to hire as many lobbyists and absolute freaks and weirdos into my administration as I possibly can".

And and and.

He's done absolutely nothing that he said he would do, and in fact has been even *worse* than Bushco regarding midnight bills, etc. So why is the media not lighting a bonfire under his feet? When I watch your media (MSNBC, CNN, etc) it would appear that they're absolutely infatuated with him. He's a political figure not a monarch or religious icon fer the gods sake.

(And not much of an "orator" when he's just got to wing it either I notice)

And before the lefty mods come down on me like a tonne of bricks, I'm no right winger and actually believed he would be different and better. Stupid me ay?

Glen Greenwald writes on Civil Rights, does a good job of critiquing Obama's administration, comparing it to Bush.

Obama's Holder, for example, is pushing the argument that the gov declared methods of spying secret, therefore there is no way to sue it or the telephone companies, harder than Bush's attorney general did.

Obama has NOT ended the wars, has NOT brought the troops home.

He has NOT opened up the government, increased transparency, despite the rhetoric.

when the items in the loss category far exceed those in the win column in areas of importance or magnitude.

Its like having a city claim crime is down because jaywalker incidents are down 100% while ignoring the fact it was because someone was shooting them.

This is President Wall Street. Main Street won't matter to him until 2011. For all the anguish and hysteria over Bush and his so called allegiance to big business, at least Bush wasn't just handing money to Wall Street. Obama proved one thing about tric

On October 1, 2008, the Senate debated and voted on an amendment to H.R. 1424, which substituted a newly revised version of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 for the language of H.R. 1424. The Senate accepted the amendment and passed the entire amended bill, voting 74-25. Additional unrelated provisions added an estimated $150 billion to the cost of the package and increased the size of the bill to 451 pages. The amended version of H.R. 1424 was sent to the House for consideration, and on October 3, the House voted 263-171 to enact the bill into law. President Bush signed the bill into law within hours of its congressional enactment, creating a $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program to purchase failing bank assets.

Cry me a river. The medias role is to enlighten and educate, not being a bunch of whiny bitches presenting whatever "view" their corporate masters want them to. If they can not plainly state that Obama's speech is the closest thing to "fuck you China" any US president has ever come, then they don't deserve to be called media because they have thoroughly failed.

I'm glad that in the United States, the president agrees that an open and uncensored internet is important to ensure the free exchange of ideas. Sometimes, to ensure true freedom of speech, you have to allow that which you may find objectionable or offensive, because once you start blocking some information, you start to... OMG what's that? Child pornography?!? BLOCK EVERYTHING, ARREST EVERYONE, MONITOR ALL TRAFFIC!

I'm not one to post quotes willy-nilly, but this one is particularly relevant to the free internet:

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. (H. L. Mencken)

I'm getting mighty tired of these quite frankly disgusting comparisons between China and western liberal democracies (mostly the US) on sites like this by western middleclass individuals living lavish lifestyles in soft liberal democracies whenever China comes up.

It's not clever, it's not rational in fact it's offensive to the people who are suffering under the boot of whatever the hell China is these days (some sort of techo communist/fascist/authoritarian hybrid that we haven't seen before) simply for bei

Well said. I find the lack of decency expressed by the 'child porn market = free speech' crowd to be staggering. As if the opportunity to sadistically destroy children, or leer from a safe distance while other people do it for you, is a human right.

You know between this and the Education speech, Obama must be getting kind of tired of having radical extremist political parties censoring his otherwise basic and principled messages. Good thing that kind of thing doesn't happen over he... wait...

It seems too convenient that the one moment where Obama was openly critical of Chinese leadership occurred during the only public venue which was not broadcast on live television. Those admonishments of Chinese censorship were intended more for us back home than the repressed Chinese people; a political stunt to appear as if he cared about human rights abuses without paying the associated political price of taking such a stand. If you doubt this, ask yourself this: why didn't he make such statements durin

His solution after becoming president? A "residual force" of more than 50,000 troops which will remain indefinitely. Well, so much for that...

IMO, simply packing up and leaving on some arbitrary timetable is irrational and likely to create even more problems in future.

Also, not really anything new. There are still over 40,000 US military personnel (Mostly Air Force and Marines) in Japan, another 35,000-ish in South Korea (Not unreasonable given the neighbors), and over 100,000 scattered around Europe (Much of those in Germany).

What's with the (hand-picked) snark? Of course the students are hand-picked. Obama is a VIP, he's not going to be left standing in front of a random crowd. There's a lot of negotiation behind the scenes just to guarantee an acceptable level of security, and it's obvious that hearing a foreign dignitary speak is a privilege that's going to be distributed in *some* way.

The Chinese fully realize that probably half or more of Americans will be very upset if something were to happen to Obama, and they're treating the problem appropriately, as would any other host country.

A couple of years ago, President Bush visited Australia. Audiences with him were hand-picked as well. And that's a meeting between two societies that are both English-speaking, Western liberal democracies, who are each others closest military and cultural allies.

Attendees to any forum with a world leader will be hand-picked, regardless of the country you are talking about.

because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable.

Of course, that doesn't apply if you criticize HIS government or try to hold it accountable. Ask Fox News.

Note: Regardless of your opinion of Fox News, it's obvious that they are being punished for daring to report on anything negative about Obama. Remember, the Freedom of the Press is just as much a RIGHT as Freedom of Speech, or Freedom from Unlawful Search and Seizure (privacy) or any other RIGHT listed in the Bill of Rights. Just because you don't like what F

Note: Regardless of your opinion of Fox News, it's obvious that they are being punished for daring to report on anything negative about Obama.

You've been watching too much V. Fox "News" has never had any problem spinning thruths and claiming that others are doing the spinning, even when it was blatantly obvious. If there's any restriction going on (highly doubtful) it's of their own will.

Reading is not your forte', is it? The person above you just said the White House wanted to hod a press conference without FOX being there. It's also worth noting that when Obama did his "tour" of Sunday morning programs he appeared on every network except FOX.

It's really hard to find any news about this story except for random blogs and that one commentators outburst. The primary source I found was politico here [politico.com].

After the White House tried keeping got involved with Treasury's decision whether or not to allow Fox News in a round robin of interviews with "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg, the five networks bureau chiefs banded together until Fox was permitted in.
The joint action shows one of the difficulties if the administration tries to marginalize Fox, especially when that disrupts the network pool. (Fox's own report via Johnny Dollar).
UPDATE: From what I hear, the situation was more between Treasury and Fox after the networks decided to pool interviews with Feinberg that had been requested by some, but not all of the networks. The bureau chiefs agreed that all networks should be included in the pool, including Fox, which had been missing from Treasury's list of networks involved in the interviews. The White House was contacted by Treasury, but as a spokesperson points out, they did not keep Fox from interviewing Feinberg.
“The fact that Major Garrett conducted an interview with Ken Feinberg at a time when all the other networks did speaks for itself," deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest told POLITICO.
“This White House has demonstrated our willingness to do a round of interviews with a range of networks but not Fox," Earnest added. "Clearly, that didn’t happen yesterday.”
Indeed, the White House conducted interviews recently between Obama and five Sunday show hosts without including Fox's Chris Wallace.
UPDATE 2: A Treasury official tells Mediaite: "There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing."

So either Fox didn't request the interview or the Treasury didn't add it to the list and consequently they weren't in the orig pool.

Something to watch out for if it happens again, but I'm not going to attribute to malice what can easily be explained by error. However it looks like you're misrepresenting or unaware of the facts. It was the Treasury, not the WH, who didn't have Fox Entertainment News in the orig pool and the WH approved the additional interview for Fox Entertainment News.

Interesting that this story is a month old, I guess all of the other networks didn't attribute the omission to malice either.

Interesting that only Fox claims that they were excluded from interviewing a politician. The other news organizations would have had a field day if the White House actually censored Fox News from participating.

Fox News is not a newscast, it's an opinion network that they misrepresent as news. They misuse and misquote sources, they use fake footage, they instigate crowds, host fake 'tea parties', misrepresent laws etc. etc.

>>>Interesting that only Fox claims that they were excluded from interviewing a politician.

How can you say that? No really, I'd like to know. I provided not one, not two, but THREE links to non-fox Networks about the white house decision to exclude FOX, and that they thought it was unfair, and yet you still make that ridiculous statement. How do you do that with a straight face?

Personally I'm happy FOX exists..........and what I'd like to see next if the Libertarian News Network, and maybe a Co

Fox news is destroying themselves and everyone else is laughing while they do it.

Not everyone else, a good chunk of people in the Southern States still takes the word of Fox "News" as Gospel. Well, the same people also listen to Rush Limbaugh religiously (pun intended), big supporter of Fox "News" - You can't switch radio stations in Texas any time of the day without tripping on one broadcasting Limbaugh. Enough said.

Whoa, whoa. Hold on there. Nobody's saying he did it. Just... just... isn't it *interesting* that he isn't denying it? I mean, nobody thinks he really did it, but imagine a world where everyone rapes and murders young girls. I mean, is that the kind of future we want for our children? By not denying it, Glenn Beck is opening up rape and murders of young girls to be a socially acceptable practice. Friends, I don't know about you, but I find that completely unacceptable. Glenn Beck just needs to come right ou

NPR/PBS, reliant as they are mostly on voluntary public donations, is a mere shadow of the legislatively-created and taxpayer funded BBC in the UK (or the Australian equivalent, ABC, for that matter). A poor cousin at best. You can't compare them like that, it's chalk and cheese quality-wise.

Not many people see PBS as a high quality or popular channel in the US. But, in Australia the ABC is one of the most-watched and best-quality networks (and has multiple channels in most areas). Ditto with the UK and the BBC.

I read the article linked to at The Guardian, and A) it's not the publication but a post on a blog, and B) it doesn't say what you seem to think it's saying.It doesn't say that Fox is a news network that is being bullied.

I haven't read the other link, but I suspect I'll find something similar...

Fox will make a crusade out of this, in the way that McGreal describes Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly as doing. But who cares what Beck and O'Reilly say, beyond the universe of people who are already proven to care what they say? Nobody. They have their 2 or 3 million viewers. Fine. Bully for them. The other 307 million Americans are busy doing other things.

It's funded by the licence fee, yes. But the government has no control over the BBC's content - it operates independently, and there is a separate BBC trust to oversee it, again independent from government. Its charter requires that it be independent from both private and government influence.

Yeah same with the ABC in Australia. Accusations of bias occasionally get flung its way (let's face it, it's an easy target being government-funded), but any empirical study will show it's easily the most balanced and fair of all the TV/radio networks. Indeed, most accusations are usually of the "you are too biased AGAINST the current government, rather than for it" nature.

The Australian ABC/British BBC/Canadian CBC really do a top notch job of providing free, quality programming and journalism. It's a real shame the US doesn't have an equivalent (and no PBS do not count... having seen their stations in a number of US markets, they are nowhere near as good).

Your comment still being on slashdot: that is your freedom of speech.Your comment being modded troll: that is everyone else's.

Modding someone "troll" is the equivalent of censorship, because it makes the comment invisible once the score drops below 1. The proper response is not censorship. The proper response is to click reply and say "I disagree".

As for rights, even the ancient greeks and romans recognized their existence. Lock a man in a cage and his first instinct is to search for escape. He has an inalienable desire (what we call a "right") to liberty, not a slave.

Because Fox News isn't broadcasting anywhere anymore. It's obvious that their rights aren't protected, and they were shut down.

Wait, What???? Oh sorry, here's Fox News on my TV right here!

I guess their rights to say whatever shit they want are indeed being defended. My bad.

So, are you saying that there is nothing between complete freedom and total shutdown?

So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews? Is it OK to give "scoops" to every network but FoxNews? Sure, not every network can attend, so I understand if the Shelbyville Gazette doesn't get invited, but Fox has the ratings to be considered on the short list of invitees. Even the other networks are getting uncomfortable [rcfp.org] with it:

Despite the administration’s pledge to play nice earlier this week, the White House tried to exclude Fox News – alone among the five White House "pool" networks – from interviewing executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg on Thursday.

After CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC balked at the plan Tuesday, ABC News’ Jake Tapper asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the appropriateness of the administration's saying that Fox News, which he called "one of our sister organizations," is "not a news organization."

(From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press... but what would they know, right?)

You just totally lost me. I don't watch Fox News, but comparing them to child molesters is a very far stretch. Yes, I said very. It's because you went from intelligent conversation to utter ignorance and, yes, lies in one post. Again, I have no use for Fox News, but I respect their right to cover news events. The Obama administration's attempt to exclude Fox News, arguably the most viewed news source on cable TV, was politically incorrect any way you look at it. If you can't take criticism, you don't belong in politics, and you damn sure don't belong running an entire nation. Take Iran's president for example. Or China's administration. Or any country's leadership which protects political gain at the expense of the citizens' rights.

There's no violation of their free speech to not invite them. Fox is still perfectly free to publish/broadcast what they want, to pursue whatever stories they want, and to express whatever negative criticism they want out there.

There's a difference between preventing someone from expressing themselves, and not facilitating it. Your right to free speech does not entail an obligation on my part to listen, or let you borrow my megaphone, or invite you to my press conference.

So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews? Is it OK to give "scoops" to every network but FoxNews? Sure, not every network can attend, so I understand if the Shelbyville Gazette doesn't get invited, but Fox has the ratings to be considered on the short list of invitees. Even the other networks are getting uncomfortable with it:

Well yes. And it's perfectly fine to be uncomfortable with it. Fox has long been known to be biased [wikipedia.org] from both left and right (e.g. Jonah Goldberg). Is it awkward and troubling for a media outlet to be singled out from an administration? Sure. At the same time though, it's not exactly that FoxNews has been on the up and up. It never was. Even when it was launched it was heavily promoted on conservative talk radio. I'm sorry, but when I hear "It's fair and balanced!" from Rush Limbaugh, I'm suspicious. Now if this endorsement was coming from the Columbia School of Journalism or the Annenberg Political Fact Check, or the Pulitzer Prize winning St Petersberg Times' Political Fact Check [politifact.com], then yes. But an unabashedly biased source, no thanks.

But Fox news is really not a `news' organization at all. They are an organ for the hardcore right wing of the US, and they exist just to push the right-wing agenda, and what they report as news is uncorrelated with the facts.

Just because they have circulation is not a reason to invite them anywhere. I don't think the National Enquirer or Penthouse is invited to the White House either.

BTW, I don't remember the right wing issuing loud howls of protests when unfriendly reporters were banned from reporting bein

Yeah but Fox News go out of their way to pull every dirty trick in the book to cause problems for Obama. And his guys aren't expected to reciprocate? Frankly the quality of "news" on Fox is so poor that they only really exist as a conservative mouthpiece anyway, so I don't know why they expected to get invited to a democrat whitehouse. Years before Obama got elected he'd been saying "american politics is going down the tubes, let's not bicker any more, both sides need to state what they want and let's see where the compromise is" etc. So the healthcare thing starts off and he gets paid shills turning up to public gatherings and protesting on behalf of medical insurance companies and Fox reports it with a straight face *as if they were just concerned members of the public*. Just straight out lying cause you want the other guy to win probably is going to make people angry in the long run.

>>>>>So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews?>>>>Yes, it's OK.

No it isn't because it then sets the precedent for the White House to block NBC, or ABC, if they make a critical remark about the president. Pretty soon we will have a media that won't report negative facts, for fear of having their WH press pass revoked.

I especially object to the forced shutdown of the Fox News network by the military, revocation of the Fox News broadcasting licenses by the FCC, the lawsuits against Fox News by the Justice Dept., seizure of Fox News studios by Federal Marshals, and the imprisonment of Roger Ailes.

It's much worse than that! The White House actually accused them of BIAS. Can you imagine?! When we all know they're fair and balanced.

Yeah, because refusing to give an interview is [i]"deciding what is truth and what is not"[/i]. Riiiiight. Let's face it, the whole Fox News thing is just Fox overdramatizing for the purposes of creating a controversy, as is usual for US TV stations.

Oh, and yeah, lying (See CBS and their fake GWB NG documents) and being a bunch of asshats is protected by the Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of the Press.

What if George Washington had declared that the writers of the Federalist Papers were a bunch of "lying asshats"?

Well, assuming the constitution had still been ratified, we would have a much more strict interpretation of it. The government couldn't so easily have expanded it's own power as it does today. A more Jeffersonian interpretation would prevent all of todays liberty usurpations.

When Franklin said "A republic, if you can keep it"...he was talking about man's tendancy to vote for the easiest, most provided for life. Freedom is hard, and never more than a generation away from loss. But we vote for the government

Washington? Perhaps not. However, his successor, John Adams, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law. James Madison, author of several of the federalist papers. attacked this new law as a unconstitutional infringement of free speech and the press.

This construction of the Constitution, and of the existing law of the land, as well as the act complained of, the legislature of Massachusetts most deliberately and firmly believe, results from a just and full view of the several parts of that Constitution; and they consider that act to be wise and necessary, as an audacious and unprincipled spirit of falsehood and abuse had been too long unremittingly exerted for the purpose of perverting public opinion, and threatened to undermine and destroy the whole fabric of the government.

This is why the States need a Constitutional Council where they can declare, as one body, which laws they consider constitutional or unconstitutional and their decision will be ultimate (yes even over-ruling the U.S.). Had such a thing existed in the 1790s the Sedition Acts would have never taken force, and no prisoners killed as a result.

We the people already held all the rights. We only consented to surrender SOME of them to form a limited social contract to secure life, liberty, and property. We don't have free speech because the government said we could....we have freedom of speech because we never gave it up.

This. Until "progressives", socialists, and the marxist democrat party decided that a dependent voter base was a key to power.

We the people already held all the rights. We only consented to surrender SOME of them to form a limited social contract to secure life, liberty, and property. We don't have free speech because the government said we could....we have freedom of speech because we never gave it up.

"We the people..." - yeah, get the slogans out right from the start, so nobody starts thinking on their own. It's funny, they all talk about "the people", but it always means "the ones that agree with me". Objectively speaking, "the people" means everybody present - including the 55% that actually think society should care about its citizens (ie. including the "progressives, socialists, and the marxist democrats" in your language) as well as the ones who don't really care either way; all in all probably 99

We (i.e. virtually all americans) believe in the right to get health or sickcare.We also believe in the right to choose smoking, drinking, or overeating as a lifestyle.We even believe you have the right to replace your damaged lung, liver, or fatty heart.

What we do NOT believe is that you can force your neighbors to pay the bill. Most Americans consider that theft of another man's labor (he works; you take the product of his work i.e. his money). We are am

Not really, Obama knew there was absolutely nothing the Chinese government could do about it other than keep his speech off the news. While I'll applaud the attempt, I'd like to see him make that speech about China in front of the UN or to the Chinese gov't.

Now if I went over there and gave the same speech, there's a good chance I wouldn't be available to post this comment for the next 3-5 years.